To wonder why people don't know the difference between loose and lose

[Bbq1]

Why is it so many people do not know that "loose' is a totally different word to" lose' with entirely different meanings? There's at least one thread daily using the word incorrectly. For example, "I am going to loose money"... The other one is "reins' and 'reigns'. A poster will say something along the lines of," My toddler wears reigns'. Is it really that difficult to know especially when it comes to loose and lose?

A friend of mine is dyslexic. He spells fruit froot how it's pronounced. He usually uses voice text to comment on social media. If he doesn't it takes him half an hour for a couple of sentences.

He is intelligent and got an engineering apprenticeship when he left school. He was not able to complete his college course because of his dyslexia. But he still got a job out of it. His boss obviously saw something in him and didn't want to lose a hard working member of staff who aims to please.

Oh but that's ok is it. Some might come on in the middle of the night while they are feeding a newborn. So type one handed.

I’m generally pretty ok at spelling but loose / lose gets me every time. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve looked it up, it just won’t stick!

I don't think this is it. Some people feel superior, just because they had a good grounding in these things when young.
Many were not properly taught spelling and grammar.
I always think of it as Lose is to Lost and Loose is just not tight. Worked for me as a child.
Same happens with There, Their, They're, and Where, Wear, We're and unless you are taught what each one means you will never know when to use each one.
I'm sure my spelling and grammar leaves a lot to be desired, but hey ho, who really cares? I don't.

Nowadays the vast majority of text read by some people is unedited internet posts written by random people, some of whom will be rubbish at spelling. Which means that some people read the wrong spelling, assume it’s correct, use it in their posts etc.

Pre-internet this just didn’t exist - the vast majority of written material would have been written by professional writers, edited, proofread etc.

And so nowadays - for people who don’t read much in the way of books, newspapers etc - I think it’s really easy to not know how to spell well, and to make lose/loose type mistakes.

The one that annoys me the most, is when they say 'brought' instead of 'bought'

It used to bother me but now I don't care. But failures in spelling, punctuation, grammar, can sometimes be so bad that I can't work out what the poster is trying to communicate. I just skip those posts, now.

You're just the type of ignorant arsehole the world needs less of!

Hahaha, if someone is going to criticise others spelling they should at least use correct punctuation!

Oh, so you're not perfect after all then?

It's often just a typo

I've also noticed the words 'of' & 'off' used in the wrong context and 'rediculous' instead of 'ridiculous'.

@Bbq1
How many pedants are in the corner? Just one?

Yes, this does my head in!

Same with then and than. I see it SO often online. They're two completely different words with different meanings and changes how the sentence reads if the wrong one is used.
The amount of times I see "I'd rather go to Spain then France" or similar (which sounds like going from one to the other but they meant to use than).
Not sure why it bugs me so much but i just don't get how it's so confusing...

I think that should be 'fewer' rather than 'less'.
I'll now retreat to Pedants' Corner. 😁

Lose isn't a short o - short o is like the o in hop.

Both loose and lose use the same o sound, that's the trouble with English phonics, one sound can have multiple spellings. In this case it's spelt as /oo/ or /oe/ but you can also spell this sound /ue/ as in prune, or /ou/ as in Lou (can't think of a better example!) or /ui/ as in bruise.

The difference in this case is the s which either makes the sound /s/ as in snake or /z/. The other problem with British phonics - one spelling can make several sounds.

Other languages don't seem to have this as much and they get bemused at the idea of poor spelling or the idea that poor spelling means a person is "thick".

Passed and past

Past is an adjective or noun, a descriptive word for a tense describing things that have happened. In the past / past times / that was a past boyfriend. You can also use it as preposition (word denoting place/direction e.g. I'm driving past a castle, or go past the Three Lions pub.

Passed is the past tense and past participle of the verb to pass, so for example

"Please pass the salt" "I passed the salt to him"
"Pass the car when you have good visibility" "I passed the car on the straight road"
"Good luck, I'm sure you'll pass the exam" "Hooray, I passed!"
"Have you seen a sign for London yet?" "We passed that hours ago!"

I think the preposition and the verb meaning that you're moving next to something and then away from it are the ones people mix up - in that case if there is another verb before it e.g. walk, drive, go, then use past. If pass is the verb, then use passed.

I'm going past / I'll drive past / I walked past ... the station
I passed the station ages ago (no other verb)

Lusse isn't really a phonetic transcription of loose or lose in English. I would mentally read that a bit like "Jus". It doesn't really follow English phonetic rules because you don't often have a double consonant in the middle of a split phoneme, so the extra se is superfluous and confusing. Luse/lus would be better, but is still ambiguous about whether you mean luce or luze. Those two spellings (or better looz/luce) are probably the easiest to pronounce in terms of not having alternative possibilities.

Ah I see @Bbq1 .

So we should have sympathy for your visual impairment getting in the way of correct writing choices, but have no sympathy for anyone with learning difficulties making incorrect writing choices

just unreal

Oh come on, you did the same thing multiple times in your post. The " doesnt move around the keyboard. I would have more respect if you just said "oops" and had a laugh about it. Now you just sound silly.

If it’s lose, you lose one of the o’s, that’s how I remember.

Agreed. Also bear with bare, as in bear with me.

Also I question the entire premise of this thread. Do you really “wonder” about this, @Bbq1 ? Do you actually want a real answer, steeped in linguistics and an analysis of the English language, cross referenced with poor school outcomes, learning difficulties, the strangeness of written versus spoken English?

Or as per Mumsnet and AIBU, did you just want to find a plinth to stand on and feel superior at those who can’t do something you can?

I am pretty sharp and comfortable when it comes to writing, I was very, very fortunate with my education. I don’t however feel the need to create a whole thread as a searchlight to highlight those who can’t do what I do.

As far as I’m concerned, on forums and text messages etc, we write to be understood. It would be amazing of course if all grammatical and spelling rules were followed, but when I see a poster say “I struggle to loose weight” I know what they’re saying.

Or maybe to confuse things even more - loos as in the plural of loo?
Although my autocorrect just tried to change loos to loose so maybe that's the culprit in some cases

This made me chuckle.

Why people feel the need to starts spelling threads is something I don’t understand. There are so many reasons people make typos., many of which aren’t because they can’t spell and don’t know the difference. On my phone predictive text is really annoying and randomly inserts the wrong word.

I’m on t’internet, I don’t have to proofread and edit a post in case the great judgy ones rock up with a red pen - wearing glasses of course.